Oregon State vs. Minnesota Design Objectives
By osbeaver
Minnesota unveiled their new uniforms for 2012 and while good for them something very similar at OSU in my mind would be a major underachievement. They did not get anywhere near the combos of Oklahoma State. Their yellow jersey may only be worn for 1 game a year for all we know since they are saving them for “special games.” No sign of another helmet color either. What this design is in my mind is very much like what Oregon State has now. Good uniforms but so few options that they get boring in a couple years.
OSU needs to go quite a bit further than these in my opinion and go with the Oklahoma St. model of plenty of looks. ASU and WSU did better than Minnesota in getting a couple more combos but I already showed in my Giant Killer proposed set of 12 combos, 6 road and 6 home, that getting 12 looks is as simple as one more pant option and a second helmet. Then if we wanted we could maybe consider an orange third helmet for special games. Oklahoma St. has 4 helmets and up to 48 combos according to their website. You can see their designs here. This slideshow that shows the looks they use more often is closer to 15.
For Oregon State I think we need atleast an orange pant added and extra helmet if not two so we can be looking at around 16-20 possibilities and 12-15 that are likely to see gametime. Figure 10-12 of those are for more common use and a few reserved for special games. You can do this all off a common look and without even breaking in any extra accent colors. I want Oregon State to have traditional aspects brought into the modern era but don’t do it as conservative as the Minnesota mockups or we will be gaining very little. These designs won’t be talked about beyond a couple months. We want ours to stay relevant and cool for atleast a few years. The extra combos is the key and then we also should have some more fun in the general design as well. We need to spice it up more than this to get recruits talking about Oregon State and our football program to be turned into a destination program that can support a future Expanded Reser.